Arnab Goswami: How legal battles caught up with the star anchor of India’s Fox News

The Republic TV star has become one of India’s most famous – and controversial – news anchors. He claims his arrest this month was a political move to shut him up, as Stuti Mishra reports

Arnab Goswami sits inside a police van outside a court after he was arrested in Alibaug, Maharashtra on 4 November (REUTERS)

As he was released from jail last week, Arnab Goswami rode through the streets pumping his fists to a crowd of jubilant supporters, hanging out of an open car sun-roof while security forces tried to maintain order, chanting “Long live Mother India!”

This was not a freedom fighter escaping unjust imprisonment, or a political leader arriving at a packed rally: Goswami is a firebrand TV anchor, the founder and lead host of the right-wing, Modi-backing news channel Republic TV.

After a meteoric rise to the top of the pile of Indian TV channels characterised by their opinion-led news coverage, raucous studio debates and even louder graphics, Goswami’s arrest on 4 November in a two-year-old suicide case came as a shock to many.

But for those The Independent spoke to who have been following the man behind the “Fox News of India”, the way he has since rallied followers behind his cause, collected messages of support from some of the country’s top ministers and vowed to fight back against what he calls politically motivated charges is classic Goswami.

To its critics, Republic TV’s rise since its launch in 2017 is part of the same resurgence in right-wing nationalist politics that handed Narendra Modi a landslide second election victory last year.

Republic’s coverage often mirrors the stance taken by Mr Modi’s ruling BJP, such as with the Hathras gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit (formerly Untouchable) woman. The BJP-led authorities cast doubt on the rape claims, despite an on-camera statement from the young victim before she died in her hospital bed, and Republic followed. On his network’s Hindi-language channel, Goswami referred to the rape allegation as manohar kahaniya, which loosely translates as a “feel-good fictional tale”.

In striking contrast, Republic led the media frenzy around the death of 34-year-old Bollywood actor Sushant Sing Rajput. The network turned an incident which police have described as suicide into a weeks-long murder mystery, alleging drug pedalling and other wrongdoing by a number of traditional nemeses of the Hindu right, from the upper echelons of Bollywood to opposition political parties in power in Mumbai and the wider Maharashtra state, where the Hindi film industry is based.

Manisha Pande, who analyses the coverage of Indian media in her weekly show on NewsLaundry, tells The Independent that the case was “the most extreme example of fake news by Republic TV”. “Arnab got a guy on his show who had written a conspiracy theory [involving Rajput’s former manager and the chief minister’s son] to just air his views without any filter, without challenging him at any point.”

Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, a meeting of Islamic missionaries became a target for criticism after infections were traced to its members in several parts of the country. While there was legitimate coverage of an official probe into the Tablighi-e-Jamaat event, the media frenzy around it continued for weeks and led to an Islamophobic backlash in many parts of the country.

In a monologue at the time, Goswami said he refused to apologise for his “razor-sharp focus” on the Muslim organisation. Later on, his channel aired images of men in skull-caps gathering despite the lockdown at Mumbai’s Bandra station, and referred to it as a conspiracy to “spread the virus”. Police investigated the comments on charges of inciting communal hatred, but the case was later dropped.

Pratik Sinha, who runs the fact-checking website Alt News, says a lot of Goswami’s content is “either Islamophobic or sensational”. “A lot of misinformation that comes out of Republic stems from its agenda of trying to be the spokesperson of BJP, that is why it is Islamophobic,” he says.

In just over three years, Republic has gone from nowhere to setting the pace in terms of news TV ratings. While India’s liberals and secularists might find its coverage objectionable, the channel found a huge and receptive audience waiting for this kind of coverage, says Sandipan Deb, editor of the conservative Swarajya Mag.

“Arnab talks for a silent majority, which very few other Indian journalists do. Much of Indian mainstream media leans left-liberal, and Arnab takes on that narrative head-on, giving two hoots for so-called political correctness."

Before founding Republic, Goswami was the star anchor of the channel Times Now, owned by the publishers of the Times of India and known for playing news fast and hard. He departed saying it was time for India to have “its first independent media”, and within months had achieved what many other giants had tried to do for years – acquired a licence from the government to start up a new national channel.

Aunindyo Chakravarty, former managing editor of NDTV, one of India’s oldest news channels, says: “Arnab is a game changer insofar as he has decided to push the envelope beyond the 'acceptable' domain of news. He has brought the Fox News model to India and made it desi (Indian).”

Republic has seen remarkable viewing figures since day one, when the channel was kicked off with a series of exposés targeting opposition politicians. It is only recently that the channel’s ratings success story has been put under scrutiny, after Mumbai police alleged the numbers were rigged as part of a wide-reaching “TRP scam”. Nine people were arrested while several top figures from the channel were called in for questioning, Goswami included.

Goswami responded by saying there was never a case against his channel and that the police were indulging in a “desperate witch hunt” called by the political leadership of the state, which is run by an anti-Modi alliance, and in particular the Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.

But criticism of the channel has also come from within in recent months. In September,  Tejinder Singh Sodhi resigned from his role as the channel’s bureau chief in Kashmir with a letter condemning Goswami’s “vile behaviour” on-screen, calling it “an apology to journalism for killing its soul for three and a half years”. 

Another reporter, Shantashree Sarkar, resigned over the hounding of Rhea Chakraborty, the actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s girlfriend at the time of his death. Sarkar accused Republic colleagues of “harassing any random people who visited Rhea’s apartment”, saying she was tasked with digging up dirt in the family’s financial records and was ultimately “punished for not bringing out biased stories”.

One Muslim reporter still at the channel, who asked not to be named, says editors would casually address him using slang terms related to his religion. But he defended Goswami, saying the anchor was always polite in person. “He is the type of leader who would reward you with good behaviour if you do good work,” the journalist said.  

After all the accusations around communal tensions and the ratings scandal, Goswami was finally arrested on 4 November over a two-year-old suicide case. Police say interior designer Anvay Naik, who took his own life, had accused Goswami and others of failing to pay for work on a studio in his suicide note, citing this as a reason he decided to end his life. The accused have denied the claims.

Republic aired footage of police dragging Goswami outside during his arrest, with the videos going viral on social media and triggering discussions about press freedom and misuse of power as top ministers of the Modi cabinet rushed to his defence. It was a backlash which critics argued has been conspicuously absent in previous police action against the press.

Hashtags like #ArnabArrested and #ReleaseArnab started to trend, as some voiced their objection and others gloated over the development. People quickly drew comparisons with the actress Chakraborty’s own arrest and jailing on drugs and abetment to suicide allegations, police action so clamoured for by Republic itself.

Unlike Chakraborty, though, Goswami was bailed within a week after his plea was accelerated to the Supreme Court in an unheard-of time scale, barely two days.

In a letter to the Supreme Court, bar association president Dushyant Dave alleged that an extraordinary urgent listing of the kind given to Goswami could not take place “without specific orders from the Chief Justice of India”.

And so Goswami is free and already claiming victory over the successful bail hearing, though the actual charges against him remain, while elsewhere across India journalists continue to be persecuted for pursuing the truth. 

At the time of publication, Goswami could not be reached for comment by The Independent.